Selected Writings: T. E. Hulme

When T.E. Hulme was killed in Flanders in 1917, he was known to a few people as a brilliant talker, a brilliant amateur of metaphysics, and the author of two or three of the most beautiful poems in the English language…he appears as the forerunner of a new attitude of mind… T.S. Eliot, The Criterion , 1924. Between 1909 and his death in 1917, T.E. Hulme (1883-1917) published works that contributed to, and often defined, the major debates of Modernism. A poet, critic and philosopher, Hulme championed new artists and explored new philosophical attitudes, challenging, questioning and clarifying, but always at the centre of contemporary currents of thought. With his gift for clear-sighted synthesis and grimly humorous awareness of human limitations, Hulme is an essential corrective to the art and culture of his time. In a detailed critical introduction, Patrick McGuinness traces the development of Hulme’s ideas, showing how they both reflected and instigated contemporary cultural controversies. This selection includes Hulme’s collected poems and fragments, and his most important essays on literature, art, politics and philosophy.